You’ll remember the headlines doing the rounds when Sky Brown was crowned world champ last year: that she already had a million Instagram followers, a published book and a £3m Nike deal; that she had almost died from a skateboarding accident three years previously; and that she was also a successful dancer and surfer.
At this point, she already had an Olympic bronze medal under her belt (she was Britain’s youngest-ever medallist in Tokyo ) — and she hadn’t even started her GCSEs.
Brown is now 16 and has reached rockstar status, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if the headline-making had started to slow down ahead of her second Olympic run in Paris this week. Somehow, however, she’s done it again. Just a days before arriving in the city for her long-anticipated second attempt at going for gold, she dislocated her shoulder during training — the latest in a string of serious injuries after sustaining an MCL tear in her knee in April.
Even more shockingly, she’s just been given the go-ahead to compete anyway. “Every injury I’ve had, I’ve come back stronger,” she said recently. “It really puts a fire in my heart — it happens, it is part of life.”
Perhaps that fire is exactly what she needs, then, ahead of tomorrow’s park skateboarding event. Brown will arrive at Place de La Concorde Urban Park tomorrow having won every event she’s taken part in since the last Olympics, so she is understandably adamant not to lose her winning streak.
To date she’s Britain’s youngest-ever skateboarding World Champion — and she also happens to be a successful dancer (she won reality show Dancing With The Stars: Juniors aged 10) and surfer — her parents actually had to stop her entering the qualifiers for Tokyo in surfing , too.
Clearly, Brown has an ability and confidence far beyond her years. “Why is that little girl here?” was a phrase she had to put up with at the skate park growing up, she told the Standard back in April.
“I just want to show them what’s up. If they give me that look, it just makes me pumped up... I have more fire in me than ever.”
So who gave Brown that fire, and how has she managed to gain star status in her tender 16 years? From going viral at the age of four, to why her little brother is her BFF, this is everything you need to know about Britain’s youngest Olympic legend.
Runs (and jumps) in the family
OK, Brown hasn’t had the upbringing of your average 16-year-old. She was born (a month before the 2008 Beijing Olympics ) in Miyazaki, Japan to a Japanese mother and British father, and has a younger brother called Ocean, three years her junior (more on him later).
The family are all skateboarders and her preschool had a skate park — a fitting childhood for the girl who became the world’s youngest professional in the sport at the age of 10.
Today, Brown splits her time between Miyazaki (they have a skating ramp in the back garden) and California, where her father Stu, a marketing exec and amateur skateboarder, lived for several years before moving to Japan.
Their US home is in Oceanside, around 35 miles from San Diego (the family had to move house after fans started leaving gifts and cards outside her California home).
Brown’s father introduced her to the sport and she doesn’t have a professional coach (though she’s worked with legendary Tony Hawk and practices with Olympic snowboarder Shaun White). In true Gen Z fashion, she learns her tricks from YouTube , first going viral at the age of four when Stu posted a clip of her on Facebook .
Since then, she’s become the youngest person to compete at the Vans US Open, when she was just eight, and when she was snapped up by Nike after turning professional in 2018, she also became the brand’s youngest athlete (Simone Biles and Serena Williams are among the stars she’s appeared in adverts with so far).
In 2019, she became the first female to successfully land a frontside 540 in the X Games, an extreme sports event, rotating one and a half times on her board in mid-air.
Despite she and her brother’s international upbringing, she’s a Brit at heart. In 2019, Brown announced she would be completing for Great Britain rather than Japan, saying she preferred the “more relaxed approach” of the British Skateboarding Association. “I really feel British,” she told the Standard. “Like, I skate British because British people are chilled and I love British food, curry especially.” She’s even recently come around to the concept of baked beans.
A sports star for the social media generation
Brown first went viral at the age of four when her father posted a clip of her on Facebook, and today she’s a fully-fledged social media star. She has millions of subscribers on YouTube and 1.3 million on Instagram, a mosaic of in-air action shots, influencer-style endorsements for Nike, GoPro and Billabong , and surfing selfies with her little “bro”, Ocean, who’s referenced in her bio.
“So I turned 16. And I’m just getting started,” she wrote next to a series of images from her 16th birthday celebrations, from dinner with friends to 0.5 selfies in the park.
“Injuries and setbacks are part of life, and that’s what makes us stronger, tougher and get better,” she wrote next to a picture of her knee in a brace in May. “This is a part of skateboarding, and I’m not afraid of it, I embrace it... I will grow and keep moving forward.”
Ocean’s personal Instagram account @oceanbrown is still managed by his mother, but he is already a social media star in his own right, with 198,000 followers and a joint YouTube channel with his sister where they vlog together. According to insiders, the pocket-sized pair are so close they often choose to sleep in the same bed.
Brown’s personal page is littered with paid partnerships and brand endorsements from Nike to Tagheur — but most importantly, she makes sport look fun.
“Now for the fun part… LET GO PARIS 2024!!!!” she posted on Instagram last month.
She told the Standard : “I feel like people don’t really know how cool skateboarding is, and how beautiful it can be and how creative it is because there’s not really any rules. You can add your own style, do a trick. I’m excited to show the world how cool it is.”
Rocking a rocky year
Brown’s background might suggest she grew up with pushy Olympic parents, but if her mother and father had had their way, she wouldn’t have appeared in the Tokyo Olympics at all.
Their reservations were understandable given their daughter’s rocky year. In June 2020, the teenager was left fighting for her life after falling 15ft from a ramp in training, fracturing her skull, breaking her left arm and wrist, as well as suffering lacerations to her heart and lungs.
“Sky had the gnarliest fall she’s ever had and is lucky to be alive,” her father Stu said at the time. “Sky remains positive and strong. The whole medical team is shocked to see her positivity.”
Brown posted a chirpy clip saying “it’s OK to fall sometimes” at the time, saying her plan was to “get back up and push even harder”’. But the accident was clearly serious and could have been a career-ender: when she came around in hospital, she readily admits she neither knew who she was nor her parents, albeit momentarily.
“They didn’t want me to skate anymore,” Brown has told the Standard of her parents’ pleas. “But that’s the thing I love. The skateboard kind of belongs to me so I can’t stop. I begged them so much but they told me to take it easy.”
Clearly, she’s a girl who can make the best of a bad situation. She released a song, ‘Girl’, while recovering from the accident, and also published her first book called Sky’s The Limit, promising “words of wisdom from a young champion”.
Brown had another fall before her Olympic qualifier in 2021, breaking her arm, but still managed to come first while wearing a protective cast. Her performance in Tokyo was called professional and mature beyond her years, but with a fun side, reflective of her age and the personality her sport requires. Before the Games, the teen reportedly invited her competitors over for a movie night and sleepover. Will she do the same tonight?
Showing the boys what’s up
“Why is she here? Why is this little girl here?”
This is the comment Brown still hears from the boys at the skate park, despite her world champion status. There are often no women’s toilets at the parks, and she’s used to the odd looks she often receives from the men.
“I’ve been around [skating] since I was really tiny, I was this little girl showing up at the skate park. And of course these big boys are going to look at me,” she says. But the teen insists it’s only made her more determined. “I like to show them my power — like, I like to go high, higher than the boys,’ she grins. ‘I like to grind longer than the boys... tweak it harder than the boys. And because my style is making it look beautiful, to make it look prettier than the boys.”
For Sky, skating isn’t just a hobby; it’s a way of life. Her speech is littered with skate terminology and slang, and during a photo shoot with the Standard this year she reportedly took every opportunity to get her feet off the cold English concrete and onto her board. “I’m definitely going for gold,” she said ahead of Paris.
Surf and turf
Brown rubs shoulders with the greats, texting Avril Lavigne and training with snowboarder Shaun White. In 2021, skateboarding legend Tony Hawk described her as “one of the best female skaters ever, if not one of the best well-rounded skaters ever, regardless of gender”.
But Brown is making waves in more sports than one. She gets up at 5am most days to surf (”it makes my cheeks hurt... I can’t stop smiling,” she says of her mornings at the beach) and has been signed by the likes of Billabong.
American world champion Carissa Moore called her a surfing “hero”, but she sadly failed to qualify for surfing in Paris, missing out by one place. She isn’t giving up any time soon. “It was a little bit of a bummer,” she told The Standard, “but I’m always going to be surfing.” When asked what she’d be if she weren’t an athlete, she says she “would have always found [her] way into the water”.
The ultimate all-rounder
Brown also loves tennis, singing and dancing, turning down a skateboarding place at the X Games in 2018 to focus on the US version of Strictly Come Dancing, Dancing With The Stars (the junior edition). She went on to win, obviously, and she was invited to appear on the Ellen DeGeneres show.
Clearly, Brown’s all-rounder status has elevated her celebrity status. In 2022 Barbie unveiled a one-of-a-kind doll created in Brown’s likeness — part of an initiative to highlight role models for young girls.
The teenager also has a philanthropic side. She’s donated over $20,000 in proceeds to Skateistan , an international charity teaching skateboarding in impoverished areas and has designed a custom board for the organisation, with $10 from every sale going towards supporting children in the programme — yet another impressive accomplishment for a 16-year-old.
After her lucky streak of victories since the last Olympics, the real question now is: can the teen medalist finally get her gold?
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